The progression of so called "emo-core" from it's humble beginnings in Washington D.C., circa 1985 to today's safe-as-milk, but profitable manipulation thereof is bewildering, and frankly phony at best. A lot was lost in the translation. Was there really any "bridge" at all connecting Rites of Spring and the Promise Ring all those years in between? You'd be hard pressed to find any sort of missing link, because there is no obvious one to found. So what about the not so obvious? Sunny Day Real Estate, though they insistently declared they weren't of that particular stripe, left their mark and were ultimately co-opted with the "emo" tag. There was a similar, but no less pronounced situation with Denver's Christie Front Drive. Swiping their moniker from an obscure, turn of the century fire engine, DCF's dim flame burned out quickly, but posthumously they were anointed as one of the key disseminators of the genre. Yet there is virtually nothing on this collection of long out of print singles and EPs to suggest any type of influence from say, Ian MacKaye, nor did they definitively lay the groundwork for bands like Thursday and Dashboard Confessional. Like many bands of their era, Christie Front Drive were a product of punk' s post-hardcore movement, and as such, angst usually trumped politics.
Determining if CFD were indeed the "missing link" is ultimately subjective, much like opting to use the term emo to begin with. Long since broken up, CFD spawned some cool spinoff projects, including The 101 , Golden City and Daniel G. Harmann
01. Turn
02. Dyed On 8
03. Long OUt
04. Lot
05. Pipe
06. Dirt
07. Slide
08. Now I Do
09. 4010
10. Away
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